United Arab Emirates

• 1. Introduction

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  The United Arab Emirates sits at the eastern end of the Arabian Peninsula, a place where stone tools from 130,000 years ago share the same soil as the world's tallest skylines. Seven emirates, each governed by a hereditary ruler, joined together in 1971 to form a country that did not exist two generations ago. Today, Dubai is the country's largest city and a global hub of finance, tourism, and commerce, while Abu Dhabi serves as the national capital. What drove this federation into being? How did a collection of sheikhdoms shaped by pearling, tribal politics, and British protection become one of the wealthiest states on earth? And what lies beneath the gleaming towers for the millions who live and work there but are not Emirati citizens?

• 2. Deep Roots

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  Stone tools recovered from the Arabian coast suggest human habitation stretching back at least 127,000 years, and butchering tools point to an even earlier presence around 130,000 years ago. The region was never isolated: trading links with Mesopotamia, Iran, and the Harappan culture of the Indus Valley flourished early, driven in part by the copper trade from the Hajar Mountains, which began around 3,000 BCE. Sumerian sources refer to the Magan civilisation, identified as encompassing the territory of modern-day UAE and Oman.

  Six distinct periods of human settlement preceded Islam in the region, including the Hafit period from 3,200 to 2,600 BCE and the Umm Al Nar culture from 2,600 to 2,000 BCE. The falaj irrigation system, an intricate network of underground water channels, enabled fortified settlements and extensive farming to take hold during the Iron Ages. By 630 CE, the Islamic prophet Muhammad sent a letter to the rulers of Oman, an act that scholars believe triggered the conversion of the northeastern tip of the Arabian Peninsula to Islam. The subsequent Battle of Dibba, in which around 10,000 lives are thought to have been lost, secured the region for the Rashidun Caliphate.

  A 7th-century Christian monastery discovered in the 1990s on what is now Sir Bani Yas Island complicates any straightforward account of the region as always Muslim. Thought to be Nestorian and built around 600 CE, the complex appears to have been abandoned peacefully by 750 CE, leaving a rare material link to a tradition of Christianity that spread across the peninsula between roughly 50 and 350 CE along trade routes. By the 5th century, Oman had a bishop named John, with the last bishop on record being Etienne, in 676 CE.

• 3. Pearls, Pirates, and the British

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  By the 18th century the Bani Yas confederation dominated most of what is now Abu Dhabi, while the Al Qawasim controlled maritime commerce in the north. The southern coast of the Persian Gulf was known to the British as the "Pirate Coast", because vessels of the Al Qawasim federation harassed British-flagged shipping from the 17th century into the 19th. That charge of piracy is disputed, most prominently by the current ruler of Sharjah, Sheikh Sultan Al Qasimi, in his 1986 book The Myth of Arab Piracy in the Gulf.

  British campaigns against Ras Al Khaimah and neighbouring harbours, including the Persian Gulf campaign of 1809 and a more decisive campaign of 1819, led to a maritime truce signed the following year. Further treaties in 1843 and 1853 consolidated these arrangements, and the Perpetual Maritime Truce was agreed in 1853. The Exclusive Agreements of 1892 formalised a British protectorate: the trucial sheikhs agreed not to cede territory or enter foreign relations without British consent, and Britain undertook to protect the coast from sea and to assist in case of land attack.

  Pearling became the dominant economic activity under this arrangement, with the British maritime presence allowing fleets to operate in relative security. The First World War damaged the industry, but its collapse was driven by the economic depression of the late 1920s and early 1930s combined with the invention of the cultured pearl. The remnants of the trade faded after the Second World War, when the newly independent Government of India imposed heavy taxation on imported pearls. In 1906, the British Political Resident Percy Cox confirmed in writing to ruler Zayed bin Khalifa Al Nahyan that the territory of Khor Al Adaid belonged to Abu Dhabi, a ruling that would carry weight in later border disputes.

• 4. Oil and the Road to Independence

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  Aware of oil discoveries in Persia from 1908 and Mesopotamia from 1927, the Iraq Petroleum Company showed interest in the Trucial States during the 1920s. The Anglo-Persian Oil Company, which held a 23.75% share in IPC, signed the first onshore concession on behalf of Petroleum Concessions Ltd in 1935. The first bore holes at Ras Sadr in 1950, drilled by PDTC, went 13,000 feet deep, took a year to complete, cost £1 million, and came up dry.

  The breakthrough came offshore. In 1953 a subsidiary of BP obtained an offshore concession from the ruler of Abu Dhabi, and in 1958 a floating platform rig towed from Hamburg was positioned over the Umm Shaif pearl bed. In March of that year it struck oil in the Upper Thamama rock formation, the first commercial discovery on the Trucial Coast. Onshore, oil in commercial quantities was confirmed at the Murban No. 3 well near Tarif on the 27th of October 1960. Exports of Abu Dhabi oil began in 1962, and Dubai's followed in 1969, allowing Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum to begin the diversification drive that would shape modern Dubai.

  By 1966 the British government acknowledged it could no longer afford to administer and protect the sheikhdoms. On the 24th of January 1968, Prime Minister Harold Wilson announced the decision to end the treaty relationships, reaffirmed in March 1971 by Prime Minister Edward Heath. Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, fearing the vulnerability this created, offered to pay the full cost of keeping British Armed Forces in the Emirates; the Conservative government rejected the offer. Iran seized the islands of the Greater and Lesser Tunbs by force on the 30th of November 1971, the day before independence, while two British warships stood nearby without intervening. On the 2nd of December 1971, six emirates formally united. Ras al-Khaimah joined on the 10th of January 1972, completing the federation.

• 5. Building a Nation

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  Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the ruler of Abu Dhabi, served as the UAE's first president from 1971 until his death on the 2nd of November 2004. He directed oil revenues into schools, hospitals, housing, and roads, transforming a territory defined by poverty and pearl collapse into one of the world's wealthiest states in roughly a generation. The UAE's economy grew by nearly 231 times in the decades after independence, reaching 1.45 trillion AED by 2013, and the country now holds the world's seventh-largest oil reserves and seventh-largest natural gas reserves.

  Yet the population tells a story of profound dependence on people from elsewhere. In 2024 the UAE's estimated population exceeded 11 million, but only 11% are native Emiratis; the vast majority are expatriates and migrant workers, most of them from South Asia. Arabic is the official language, but English is the most spoken language and the language of business. The UAE has the most diversified economy in the Gulf Cooperation Council, and between 2000 and 2018 average real GDP growth ran at close to 4%. Nominal GDP reached US$414.2 billion in 2018.

  On the 9th of February 2021, the UAE's Mars probe, named Hope, successfully entered Mars orbit. The UAE became the first Arab country to reach Mars and only the fifth country overall to do so; it was also the second country, after India, to orbit Mars on a maiden attempt. In December 2019, the UAE became the only Arab country and one of only five countries in the world to attain gender parity in a national legislative body, with its lower house reaching 50 percent women. The country also created a Ministry of Tolerance, a Ministry of Happiness, and a Ministry of Artificial Intelligence, as well as a virtual Ministry of Possibilities.

• 6. Power and Its Limits

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  The Federal Supreme Council, composed of the seven ruling emirs, is the highest authority in the state. Customarily the head of the Al Nahyan family holds the presidency and the head of the Al Maktoum family the prime ministership. The Federal National Council, a 40-member body, holds nationwide elections every four years, but only about 33% of Emirati citizens, hand-picked by the rulers of each emirate, are eligible to vote. Half of the council is appointed directly by the rulers, the other half elected within this narrow pool. The FNC is restricted to a consultative role.

  Freedom House has listed the UAE as "Not Free" every year since 1999, the first year records appear on their website. In 2025, the country ranked 18 out of 100 on their freedom index. In 2013-94 Emirati activists were held in secret detention centres and tried for allegedly attempting to overthrow the government; a relative of one defendant was arrested for tweeting about the trial and sentenced to 10 months in jail. In 2023, the country held what became its largest mass trial. Beginning in December 2023-84 defendants stood trial; 43 were sentenced to life in prison and ten received sentences of up to 15 years for peaceful protests. Those convicted were Bangladeshi nationals protesting the policies of their home government, yet the UAE classified them as members of a terrorist organisation. No documents or evidence were provided in court.

  Article 188 of the Penal Code, updated in 2022, makes establishing an organisation with the intent to challenge the existing regime punishable by life imprisonment or the death penalty. The kafala sponsorship system ties migrant workers to individual employers, creating conditions that human rights organisations have compared to indentured servitude. Domestic workers remain outside the protection of both the 1980 UAE labour law and the 2007 draft labour law. Ryan Cornelius, a 71-year-old British citizen, has been unlawfully detained in the UAE since 2008.

• 7. Military and Global Entanglements

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  United States Armed Forces generals and former defence secretary James Mattis nicknamed the UAE military "Little Sparta", a reference to the outsized effectiveness of a force that numbered around 44,000 active Army personnel, 2,500 Navy personnel with 46 ships, 4,500 Air Force personnel with 386 aircraft, and 12,000 in the Presidential Guard. In 2022 the country spent US$20.4 billion on defence, equal to 4% of its GDP. Most UAE officers are graduates of the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst.

  The UAE has deployed troops to Somalia under UN UNOSOM II, Kosovo, Kuwait during the Iraq War, Lebanon for demining operations, Afghanistan under Operation Enduring Freedom, Libya, and Syria. The single deadliest day in the UAE military's history came on the 4th of September 2015, when a Tochka missile launched by Houthi forces struck a weapons cache in Marib, Yemen, killing 52 soldiers. The country operates a uniquely configured variant of the General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon, unofficially called the Desert Falcon, developed specifically for the United Arab Emirates Air Force.

  On the 28th of February 2026, coordinated US and Israeli strikes on Iran triggered a series of retaliatory drone and missile attacks from Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps targeting US military assets and Emirati economic infrastructure. Israel sent its Iron Dome missile-defence system and military personnel to operate it on UAE soil, the first time the technology had been sent to another country. The Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter, that the UAE had itself been striking Iran throughout the conflict, including a strike on Lavan Island in early April. The UAE announced its exit from OPEC on the 28th of April 2026, effective the 1st of May, partly to allow increased oil production. Sudan filed a case against the UAE at the International Court of Justice on the 6th of March 2025, accusing it of complicity in genocide by supplying weapons to the Rapid Support Forces in Darfur, including drone technology.